Week End Roundup: November 20th

In this week’s Week End Roundup: hiring in Europe and the U.S. appears to be increasing; mass layoffs in the U.S. slowed in October; unemployment in Hong Kong drops to 5.2% over the past quarter; and small businesses turn to creative solutions to improve candidate screening.
To Recruiting Roundup readers in the U.S., have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

Employment Vacancies: A Job to Do (Economist)
During October, recruitment in Europe and the U.S. increased, according to a Monster Employment Index that measures hiring intentions based on the number of job postings. While Europe saw its first increase since February, the region’s recruitment is still one-third lower than that of last year. In the U.S., recruitment is about 20% lower than that of last year.

Mass Layoffs Slow, but Remain High (Wall Street Journal)
Mass layoffs in the U.S. slowed last month, according to a recent Labor Department finding. (Mass layoff is defined as layoffs that take place with more than 50 people). The number of people displaced as a result of mass layoffs decreased by 30,824 workers in October, with temporary help services and manufacturing accounting for a large percentage.

Unemployment Rate Drops to 5.2% (China Daily)
In Hong Kong, the trailing quarterly unemployment rate dropped to 5.2% for the period of August to October. However, officials warn that the drop may be due to a decrease in the number of job seekers rather an increase in hiring. Segments that showed noticeable improvements include the youth age group (between the ages of 15-19) and the construction sector.

To Hire Best Hires, Firms Become Creative (Wall Street Journal)
Small companies faced with too many resumes for too few job openings are finding creative means to winnow down the list of candidates. One company in Canada held an open house at their office where candidates were invited to mingle with employees and interact with a hiring team in a brief screening session similar to “speed dating”. Using this differentiated approach, and other approaches, these companies are able to quickly view candidates in the company environments to judge whether the candidate would be a good fit as an employee.

Taking a similar approach, one Roundtable member uses onsite group panel interviews to select high-volume employees. Doing so allows this organization to observe competencies for customer-facing positions that is often difficult to do in an individual interview. Read more here (Roundtable members only).

2010 Recruiting Trends

After much anticipation, we released the Roundtable’s 2010 Recruiting Forecast this week. Drawing on responses from Recruiting executives at nearly 90 organizations across the globe, this report provides an overview of 2010 budgets, hiring levels, and sourcing trends. To whet your appetite, a few very high-level trends:

• Recruiting staff salaries seem to be stabilizing
• The use of Web 2.0 recruiting technologies is widely projected to increase
• Career Web site investment and sourcing use are projected to increase

Roundtable members, finalize your 2010 plans by learning how your peers are forecasting for the upcoming year in the 28-page, full version of the 2010 Recruiting Forecast.

Highlights from Michigan State University 2009-2010 Recruiting Trends Report

College hiring this year, compared to last, is down and is expected to fall next year, but there are some pockets of growth in the hiring of graduates. Michigan State University just released highlights from their Recruiting Trends Report for 2009-2010 which focuses on trends in college hiring. A few highlights from the report on college hiring trends:

• Hiring of college students in 2009 was down 35-40% from 2008 levels
• Hiring of college students for 2010 is predicted to be down 2% from 2009 levels
• Large (over 4,000 employees) and midsized (500 to 4,000 employees) companies expect to decrease college hiring in 2010 by 3% and 11% respectively, while small size companies (less than 500 employees) expect in increase college hiring by 15%
• Sectors that are expecting to experience growth in college hiring include e-commerce and entrepreneurship, agriculture production and food processing, environmental sciences, information systems, manufacturing, nonprofits, statistics, nursing, social work, multimedia and Web design
• Sectors that are expecting to see a decrease in college hiring include accounting, banking, engineering, transportation, utilities, real estate and computer science and computer programming.
• Overall organizations are focusing on hiring candidates with flexibility and adaptability skills

The results of this report are based on a survey of over 2,500 companies and institutes and will be presented at the annual Trends in Recruiting Conference in Chicago on November 20th.

Week End Roundup: November 13th

In this week's Week End Roundup: the U.S. sees initial jobless claims fall and job openings rise; one measure of overall unemployment figures fall in the U.K., and the Australian job market continues to rally for the second straight month.

Initial Jobless Claims in the U.S. Falls to 10-Month Low (Bloomberg)
Less Americans than anticipated filed claims for unemployment benefits last week, as initial unemployment claims fell by 12,000 last week, the lowest level since January. The recent claim reductions may mean many companies have already cut staff to a bare minimum; however, the reductions in claims may not stop the jobless rate from climbing further after reaching a 26-year high in October 2009.

Australia Posts Second Straight Month of Strong Job Growth (New York Times)
Australian employment rose 24,500 in October, a second month of surprisingly strong growth; the jobless rate ticked up to 5.8 percent in October, from 5.7 percent in September, but has essentially been steady around this level since March. The recent Australian figures were a marked contrast with the United States, where unemployment was up at 10.2 percent.

Job openings rise, but hiring still weak (CNN)
Although job seekers now outnumber openings by more than six to one, and there were fewer than 2.5 million job openings in September 2009 -- down 35% from a year ago -- the number of job openings rose slightly to 2.48 million in September from 2.42 million in August. This slight rise could potentially signal increasing hiring in 2010, according to some analysts.

Recovery hopes rise as UK unemployment dips (Telegraph UK)
Unemployment in Britain fell in September, official figures showed recently, fuelling hope that the worst of the recession is over for the jobs market. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said UK unemployment hit 4,000 fewer than the three months to August. However, on a quarterly basis, the number of unemployed people rose by 30,000 in the three months to September, compared with the three months to June.

Some ROI Numbers for Campus Recruiting

Campus/graduate recruiting is easy to support in a good economy but can be difficult to support in a bad one. A look at the headlines about the rising joblessness of recent graduates (such as this one from Business Week) shows that large-scale campus hiring isn’t on the priority list of many organizations today.

When times are tough, investments without a hard ROI calculation behind them are the first to go. Campus recruiting is usually in that category.

Until now. Lancaster University just released a study concluding that campus hires pay for themselves after just 20 months on the job, and over three years can bring 500% ROI. The study was based on determining the cost per campus hire and calculating how much these hires earn for the business. It looks like there’s new material out there for our business cases to keep campus recruiting on the priority list.

(Roundtable members, access other data and templates to help you build your case for campus recruiting.)

Recruiting Temporary Hires

Despite recent green shoots in the economy, there’s a lot of uncertainty about how strong the recovery will be. Many of us in recruiting are proceeding with caution, but we also face the need to provide labor to meet increased demand for goods and services. Some organizations have turned to temporary hires to address the up-tick in demand. In the US, despite the increase in unemployment rate to 10.2% in October, the economy added 34,000 temporary jobs last month.

There are many benefits to hiring workers on a temporary basis (and keeping in mind the possibility of converting some of those workers to permanent workers in the future). Temporary workers:

• Provide an opportunity to evaluate performance and fit to see if they should be retained as a permanent employee
• Don’t usually need to be given costly health or retirement benefits
• Protect the organization from further layoffs by creating a more flexible labor force

In this labor market, many job seekers who would not have considered a temporary job before are now more open to the discussion of temporary work. This change in outlook provides us, as recruiters, with more options in hiring workers on a temporary basis.

Week End Roundup: November 6th

In this week's Week End Roundup: the U.S. unemployment rate reaches double-digits; E.U. expects a better economy in 2010; Canada's unemployment rate jumps to 8.6%; and in Australia, the long-term unemployed and new entrants to the labor market face difficulties finding a job.

Unemployment Rate Jumps to 10.2 Percent (Washington Post)
The unemployment rate in the U.S. increased to 10.2% in the month of October, up from 9.8% in September. Although this figure is the highest since 1983, the pace was slower than last month’s increase. The demographic group most affected by unemployment was teenagers and the industries that shed the most jobs were construction and manufacturing. On a more positive note, temp hiring increased by 34,000 jobs.

E.U. Lifts Growth Forecast for 2010 (New York Times)
The 27 countries in the EU bloc are expected to be out of recession by 2010 and to reach an unemployment rate of 10.25%, the European Commission says. It is forecasted that France and the UK will be one of the first nations to show job growth.

Jobless Rate Jumps to 8.6% (The Globe and Mail)
Canada shed 43,200 jobs in October, Statistics Canada reported on Friday. This jump put the country’s unemployment rate at 8.6%, reversing the growth experienced during the previous two months The report suggests that hiring will remain tepid. Adult women and teenagers contributed largely to the unemployment rate, and the retail and wholesale sectors faced the largest declines.

The Bad News: Finding a Job May Take Longer (The Australian)
Reducing the hours worked by existing employees helped Australia avoid the high unemployment rates seen in other parts of the world. Although already employed workers were able to save their jobs, new entrants into the labor market (youth and young adults) and the long-term unemployed continue to struggle with finding a job. Some worry that those who fall into a trap of prolonged unemployment may lose crucial job skills and be negatively affected by employer perceptions of the individual’s unemployment status.

Have You Reorganized Lately?

A fair number of the conversations I’ve had recently with recruiting executives starts with a reference to the recent restructuring or reorganization of their recruiting team (also reflected in a recent Roundtable member poll—for members only). This is not a surprise given the current economic conditions. Whether it was centralization, decentralization, staff reductions, or departures, most of us are in the same boat of “doing more with less.”

With a new team, it’s tempting to get started on all of the initiatives that we never had time to do when recruiters were chained to old structures and overwhelming hiring volume—building talent pipelines, updating the employment brand, and choosing assessment vendors. But if reorganization has taken place, chances are there are new roles, new processes, and/or disengaged recruiters to deal with first.

Even if it’s already been done, do a second check of the “basics”:

• Clarify roles and responsibilities within the newly structured teams, and be aware of any gaps that restructuring may have left behind


• Improve (or redefine) process efficiency, taking into account handoffs to different stakeholders who may have been added or removed from the original process


• Make sure members of your team are engaged, have compelling career paths, and are measured by accurate performance criteria

If the optimists are correct (and we’re on the eve of hiring volume increase), your recruiting team’s success will depend on getting these basics right.

Candidates Who Will Say Anything to Get a Job

The job market is tough out there for candidates; with high unemployment rates and only a handful of firms hiring, some candidates are desperate enough to stretch the truth. In fact, in a 2008 Roundtable survey of new hires almost one in four admitted they were less than accurate during the selection process (and that was when unemployment was still in the 6% range). While Roundtable research shows the majority of job seekers are willing to wait for the right job offer, there is a small subset that are willing to do whatever it takes to get a job.

Jeffrey Chiang is one of those in that small subset. While interviewing with one financial services firm, he fabricated a story about receiving an offer from another firm, and even went as far as forging an offer letter (with a glaring typo, no less). It wasn’t long before well-connected financial services recruiters started comparing notes, and it’s pretty obvious that he won’t be working for Wall Street anytime soon.

The recent case of Jeffrey Chiang is a great example of the type of candidates that we need to be wary of. There are a few things that we can do as recruiters to increase the rigor of our selection processes.

1. Make candidates demonstrate what they can do. Move beyond just asking candidates to describe their skills and ask them to demonstrate their skills in a live setting.
2. Use a detailed skills questionnaire to gather information on candidate’s experiences performing critical skills and tasks.
3. Leverage the insights of the candidate’s contacts for more usable and accurate reference check information during the reference check process.